


Stars

by ofgoatsandllamas



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, bread symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9052489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofgoatsandllamas/pseuds/ofgoatsandllamas
Summary: All he knew was that he couldn’t see the stars. Secret Santa gift for @the-end-of-the-chase .





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been in a writing block for almost two months now and not even this gift exchange really succeeded at truly dragging me out of it. I was trying, but everything I wrote felt wrong, even some excessive and actually pretty good bread puns I tried to include. So I manned up - I bought some beer, got drunk, rewatched the movie, cried like fountain, then typed this out. I still find it miserable though and I hope the latter lame pun makes up for it. Happy Holidays!

Whether this was heaven or hell, Javert did not know; he hadn’t put much thought into the afterlife in the first place. Falling from the bridge, he had thought it would be over. Hoped. When he had hit the water, pain numbing every atom of his being, he’d seen a kaleidoscope of colours and had believed it to be a final gift from life before the darkness swallowed him for eternity.

It hadn’t.

Whatever this was that he was living, felt like only a memory of life. He supposed, it was a culmination of everything he’d experienced during his earthly existence, gnawing away day after day, night after night at his soul, possibly as atonement for his sins, possibly just because it happened to be that way, because the universe made no sense.

This afterlife was sometimes striking in its resemblance to Earth. He often happened upon landmarks he’d seen; the docks of Montreuil-sur-Mer, the Notre Dame, even the bagne at Toulon. Sometimes he met people from the past. Once he met Chabouillet in a prison, and no matter how he wondered, he couldn’t fathom how either of them had ended up there. He vaguely remembered talking; he had no memory of anything that had been said. It was an endless wandering on street after street, chasing after this or that, although who he was chasing and why he was chasing them, he did not know.

All he knew was that he couldn’t see the stars.

*

In this entangled mess of existence, making sense of time was something he’d given up on in the very beginning.

And yet, one day, he realized that he was indeed living a _day_ , and after so long or so little amount of time having passed, he felt a certain uneasiness mingle into his thoughts at the knowledge that he was once again the victim of the clocks. Eternity once again lost its tangibility, and when he set about to wandering the streets as he always did and chasing after whoever he was chasing, he found no incentive to do so.

Warm sunshine carressed his cheeks. A child laughed somewhere, and he realized, it had been so very long since he’d heard such innocent laughter. Somewhere, in the distance, a familiar melody soared.

Javert stopped walking when the scent of freshly baked bread wafted towards him. His legs suddenly felt like giving out under him. An immense hunger overtook him. Almost blindly, he placed foot in front of foot in the direction he estimated the source of the delicious smells to be.

It was a house, just like any other house.

It had a door just like any other door.

And yet, of all the houses to have ever been created by God, this was the one that invited him as a home, and of all the doors, this was the one he wanted to knock on.

He banged the knocker against the oak once twice, and when nobody answered, he repeated the action. There was a muffled sound of slippers shuffling. In that moment, everything dimmed in the world surrounding him, every sound diminued into but a whisper as the clackling of slippers down stairs became more and more audible.

It was a girl who opened the door, curly and blonde and bright-eyed, and Javert had the impression of having looked into these same eyes once during his time on Earth, although through the haze of memories and through the entwinement of the real and the imaginary, he couldn’t discern when it had been and why. He followed her up a flight of  stairs. She ushered him into a simple yet elegant salon, where a table had been set with cutlery for two, and a freshly baked loaf of bread was all the food set to be served.

Javert sat reverently onto one of chairs. The girl’s hand brushed his back comfortingly, and then she was gone.

It was then that he noticed the man standing by the window. His figure melded into the shadows and Javert realized it was dark again already, and the man was fussing with a match and though a billion spots sparkled in the sky behind him, it was only him Javert could see. Almost as if, he was all he’d seen all these years.

He knew him, too; he knew him oh, so well, and yet so little.

Once the match had been lit and all candles of a candelabra were shining bright, the man turned to him with a kindly smile.

„Good evening, Inspector. I knew you would find me sooner or later.”

Almost as if it had never existed, the hunger disappeared and with renewed strength, Javert rose from his chair to amble over to the man by the window.

„Valjean,” he said. „Jean Valjean.”

Valjean nodded, and offered a hand; Javert accepted it without hesitation, and it was warm and comforting and though it felt out of place, a glimmer of hope in his heart told him he could easily get used the feeling. There was something in the touch that dissolved whatever woes the past had held and foretold a bright, brilliant future, shining almost like...

Javert noticed at the night sky hanging low on the Parisian houses, the multitudes of stars more radiant than he had ever seen them, and stared. It wasn’t that order had reinstated itself in his world, no; this was a brand new world, with a brand new order, and it felt _right_.


End file.
